ADELPHI, Md. -- Members of the Army's corporate research laboratory have developed a way to automate time-consuming processes in order for the Army to focus on its core mission and strategic goals.

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory, the Army's corporate research laboratory also known as ARL, and the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Information Management have successfully deployed the first automation for an interface error monitoring process utilizing Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, technology.

RPA-enabled Access OnLine, or AXOL, iDocs Monitoring reduced the processing time for report generation from two hours to five minutes.

"This achievement marks a major milestone in the Army's efforts to automate time-consuming processes," said Vincent Deright of ARL's Management, Manpower, and Budget Branch. "Deploying this automation helps pave the way for broader adoption and implementation of RPA across the Army enterprise."

ARL was granted the honor of naming the Bot by ODASA-FIM.

The Bot is officially named the Automated Research Capability and Assistance Bot, or ARCAB.

"ARCAB will be of benefit to any systemic process that is routine in nature such as running reports and merging multiple reports to support data analysis," said Swami Bandaru of ARL's Resource Management Division. "The processes can be from multiple source systems, which is a great advantage, provided necessary system accesses are available for the Bot."

Bandaru noted that while ARCAB is currently running in attended mode, it could very well be un-attended in the future.

According to its creators, the development of ARCAB is so crucial for not only ARL and ODASA-FIM, but for the Army as a whole.

"ARCAB saves a lot of time and resources for the Army by eliminating human errors in the process," Bandaru said. "Being the first, it demonstrates the viability and paves way for future automations."

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The CCDC Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. As the Army's corporate research laboratory, ARL discovers, innovates and transitions science and technology to ensure dominant strategic land power. Through collaboration across the command's core technical competencies, CCDC leads in the discovery, development and delivery of the technology-based capabilities required to make Soldiers more lethal to win our Nation's wars and come home safely. CCDC is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Futures Command.